Monday, March 04, 2013

First Impressions of The Bible on the History Channel

The History Channel premiered The Bible last night (the first of 5 episodes). Having heard the
Director, Mark Burnett, interviewed several months ago, I had been looking forward
to it. Telling the story of the Scriptures in 10 hours is an impossible task –
obviously there are going to be some gaps and some significant fast-forwards.
Burnett told a group of ministers, “My job is to give an overview, and I hope
to funnel people into your churches where you can tell them the whole story.”
Obviously some folks on Twitter didn’t get that message. The very small sample
(meaning, those I follow on Twitter) I read last night was divided – some loved
The Bible, others found lots of
inaccuracies and reasons to complain.

I was in that first group. I enjoyed it very much. The scene
where Abraham was preparing to sacrifice Isaac was powerful, and it brought
tears to my eyes. Moses was depicted in a way that made liberal use of artistic
license, but the gist of the story was accurate. Obedience to the One True God
was a dominant theme.

The thing I loved was that millions of viewers were
seeing/hearing the truths of Scripture, perhaps for the very first time. I’m
praying that God will use this series to draw many people to Him.

It was okay. The graphics for a miniseries is better than usual. The acting/lines were somewhat weak but not as bad as those in Christian based directions like the Omega Code and Left Behind, which I enjoyed too. The timelines were off a little such as Moses looked only about 45 when he went to Pharoah when he was supposed to be 80. They gave him a limp instead of a speech impediment. But the worse scene was Sodom and Gomorrah. They made it out to be that the townspeople were calling out to Lot to beat them angels up when in reality they wanted to rape them.